Back-patch "Fix EquivalenceClass processing for nested append relations".

When we committed a87c729153, we somehow
failed to notice that it didn't merely improve plan quality for expression
indexes; there were very closely related cases that failed outright with
"could not find pathkey item to sort".  The failing cases seem to be those
where the planner was already capable of selecting a MergeAppend plan,
and there was inheritance involved: the lack of appropriate eclass child
members would prevent prepare_sort_from_pathkeys() from succeeding on the
MergeAppend's child plan nodes for inheritance child tables.

Accordingly, back-patch into 9.1 through 9.3, along with an extra
regression test case covering the problem.

Per trouble report from Michael Glaesemann.

src/backend/optimizer/path/allpaths.c

@@ -1031,10 +1031,15 @@ get_cheapest_parameterized_child_path(PlannerInfo *root, RelOptInfo *rel,
  * accumulate_append_subpath
  *		Add a subpath to the list being built for an Append or MergeAppend
  *
- * It's possible that the child is itself an Append path, in which case
- * we can "cut out the middleman" and just add its child paths to our
- * own list.  (We don't try to do this earlier because we need to
- * apply both levels of transformation to the quals.)
+ * It's possible that the child is itself an Append or MergeAppend path, in
+ * which case we can "cut out the middleman" and just add its child paths to
+ * our own list.  (We don't try to do this earlier because we need to apply
+ * both levels of transformation to the quals.)
+ *
+ * Note that if we omit a child MergeAppend in this way, we are effectively
+ * omitting a sort step, which seems fine: if the parent is to be an Append,
+ * its result would be unsorted anyway, while if the parent is to be a
+ * MergeAppend, there's no point in a separate sort on a child.
  */
 static List *
 accumulate_append_subpath(List *subpaths, Path *path)
@@ -1046,6 +1051,13 @@ accumulate_append_subpath(List *subpaths, Path *path)
 		/* list_copy is important here to avoid sharing list substructure */
 		return list_concat(subpaths, list_copy(apath->subpaths));
 	}
+	else if (IsA(path, MergeAppendPath))
+	{
+		MergeAppendPath *mpath = (MergeAppendPath *) path;
+
+		/* list_copy is important here to avoid sharing list substructure */
+		return list_concat(subpaths, list_copy(mpath->subpaths));
+	}
 	else
 		return lappend(subpaths, path);
 }

src/backend/optimizer/path/equivclass.c

@@ -1937,16 +1937,20 @@ add_child_rel_equivalences(PlannerInfo *root,
 		if (cur_ec->ec_has_volatile)
 			continue;
 
-		/* No point in searching if parent rel not mentioned in eclass */
-		if (!bms_is_subset(parent_rel->relids, cur_ec->ec_relids))
+		/*
+		 * No point in searching if parent rel not mentioned in eclass; but
+		 * we can't tell that for sure if parent rel is itself a child.
+		 */
+		if (parent_rel->reloptkind == RELOPT_BASEREL &&
+			!bms_is_subset(parent_rel->relids, cur_ec->ec_relids))
 			continue;
 
 		foreach(lc2, cur_ec->ec_members)
 		{
 			EquivalenceMember *cur_em = (EquivalenceMember *) lfirst(lc2);
 
-			if (cur_em->em_is_const || cur_em->em_is_child)
-				continue;		/* ignore consts and children here */
+			if (cur_em->em_is_const)
+				continue;		/* ignore consts here */
 
 			/* Does it reference parent_rel? */
 			if (bms_overlap(cur_em->em_relids, parent_rel->relids))

src/backend/optimizer/plan/createplan.c

@@ -753,7 +753,7 @@ create_merge_append_plan(PlannerInfo *root, MergeAppendPath *best_path)
 
 	/* Compute sort column info, and adjust MergeAppend's tlist as needed */
 	(void) prepare_sort_from_pathkeys(root, plan, pathkeys,
-									  NULL,
+									  best_path->path.parent->relids,
 									  NULL,
 									  true,
 									  &node->numCols,